Dubrovsky names Sablatura as new Russian coach

Russian national team announced during training camp at Chaikovskiy

At the end of July, the Russian national Nordic Combined team met for an important training camp at the Snezhinka complex in Chaikovskiy which was used to reflect on the past season and which will set the course for the years to come.

„The situation is critical, we have to get back up and go ahead with the work for new starts and victories“, the former national coach and new president of the Ski Jumping and Nordic Combined Federation of Russia, Dimitry Dubrovsky said at a press conference held on the eve of the training camp. „We intend to completely redesign the coaching system and have invited the former Czech head coach Ludek Sablatura who has built up many of the strongest athletes.“

In preparation of Sablatura’s arrival, large amounts of training work on the bike and in power training have been done. The Russian specialists Alexander Garanin and Sergey Zhukov, who was formerly in charge of the junior team, will be working together with Sablatura as coaching staff.

Ernest Yahin, Viacheslav Barkov, Alexey Seregin, Evgeniy Klimov, Samir Mastiev, Dmitry Zharkov, Maksim Kipin and Timofei Borisov have been named to the renewed national team which will work with Sablatura. Old hands Ivan Panin, Niaz Nabeev and Denis Isaikin will prepare individually. „These athletes have been on the national team for a long time and need to show peak results at the international level. Unfortunately as of now, this progress can not be observed. The decision from the board of coaches was that they go with individual training.“

The junior team was also provided with a new coaching team: Konstatin Voronin, Yuri Konokykhin and Alexander Zinoviev will take care of the future champions.